During a recent product demonstration at SRI headquarters in Menlo Park, computer scientist Harry Bratt spoke into the microphone of his lab's new translation computer: "Did you hear the explosion this morning?"

[TECH TALK: Chronicle tech reporter Tom Abate plays back audio recorded for his story on new language translation technology. The recording demonstrates how the computer translates English into the Iraqi dialect of Arabic. Also, CNET reviews video cams and David Einstein has advise on digital cameras.]

Several seconds later, software written by SRI International scientists piped the question through the computer's speaker -- this time in the Iraqi dialect of Arabic.

Saad Alabbodi, an Iraqi immigrant posing as a civilian being questioned by a U.S. soldier, answered in his native tongue.

There was another pause as the computer translated Alabbodi's reply into English in a mock interrogation that provided another example of how technology is slowly mimicking complex human capabilities such as speech.

The demonstration showed off a system that this nonprofit research institute has been developing for the Department of Defense. Thirty-two of the systems -- rugged notebooks loaded with the SRI software -- have been shipped to Iraq, where U.S. military personnel are testing them in the field.

"One of the crying needs in Iraq is overcoming the language barrier," said Kristin Precoda, director the SRI lab that developed the two-way translation system called IraqComm.

The system is a far cry from the universal translator of the "Star Trek" television series. It isn't designed to handle subtle or wide-ranging discussions. So human translators -- including 9,000 small U.S. companies that are projected to do $5.7 billion in business in 2007 -- don't have to worry about being cut out of the conversation just yet.

Limited use, settings

Instead, IraqComm's vocabulary of 40,000 words in English and 50,000 in Iraqi Arabic is designed to enable soldiers or medics to converse with civilians in a limited range of settings such as military checkpoints, door-to-door searches or first-aid situations.

The staged encounter between Bratt, the computer scientist, and Alabbodi, who fled Iraq with his family in 1991 and now manages two gas stations on the Peninsula, illustrated the strengths and weaknesses of the system.

The computer translated a series of questions and answers that allowed Bratt to ascertain that Alabbodi had witnessed the imaginary explosion and seen a handful of men running toward a school. When Bratt asked Alabbodi to lead him to the school, the Iraqi said no and the computer translated his reason from Arabic into broken English: "I am afraid anyone to see me."

While less than perfect, the demonstration suggests that IraqComm provides rudimentary interpretation, at least under favorable conditions -- no one shooting or shouting, and both parties speaking in short sentences that were relatively easy for the computer to interpret.

"It sounds like it's pretty cutting edge," said Ramon Barquin, a Washington expert on topics such as data mining and automated intelligence gathering.

Although not specifically familiar with the IraqComm software, Barquin tracks machine translation -- a term that includes the automated rendering of text, electronic and audio communications from one language into another. The Sept. 11, 2001, attacks prodded the Defense Department and other federal agencies to pour resources into machine translation, stressing Arabic and languages such as Pashto and Dari, which are spoken in parts of Afghanistan.

"There are 17 to 20 languages involved in the war on terror," said Kevin Hendzel, spokesman for the American Translators Association, a trade group in Alexandria, Va.

SRI's IraqComm project follows an earlier Defense contract under which Precoda's lab wrote software for a simpler, one-way device called the Phraselator. It is a rugged handheld device equipped with a good microphone and a loudspeaker. The Phraselator was initially designed to recognize 800 to 1,000 utterances in English. It could be loaded with the equivalent phrases in any language -- as long as the words were recorded by a human translator.

Precoda likened the device to a phrase book that "heard" the English speaker and rendered the appropriate translation. The Phraselator was first delivered to U.S. forces in Afghanistan in April 2002, loaded with Pashto and Dari. The one-way device allowed soldiers at checkpoints, for instance, to ask civilians for their identification. Prior to this, she said, soldiers got ID from people by motioning them onto the ground and fishing through their belongings.

The Phraselator has since been loaded with many languages, including Iraqi Arabic, and is being used in a variety of military and civilian applications.

The two-way translation ability of IraqComm -- though limited in its range of topics -- still represents a big advance, she said. Assuming the field tests on the 32 units pan out, the technology could be widely deployed in places where human interpreters are scarce, are scared to work with American forces or are perhaps not entirely trusted.

Dolatschko, who arranged for Alabbodi to play the Iraqi speaker at the demonstration, said it will be a long time before software could replace human translators, who instinctively grasp the context in which words are used. For instance, does "trunk" refer to an elephant or a car?

Humans still better

"You cannot beat the power of the human brain for many years to come," she said.

But Dolatschko said the basic technology of two-way translation for a limited range of topics would probably perform well in places like urban hospitals that are likely to encounter many non-English-speaking patients.

SRI business development director Doug Bercow, who sat in on the demonstration, said two-way machine translation of conversations, even in such limited settings, is probably five to 10 years away.

But SRI has a track record of moving voice technologies from the lab into life. In the mid-1990s, an SRI speech recognition technology was spun off into a commercial product that Charles Schwab and Co. started using in 1996 to let customers get stock quotes by telephone.

Nowa, when we dial into a phone center, it is routine for some sort of machine-processing system to ask where we want to go next in an effort to serve us better.